Social Media Does Not Cause Harm to Children, Meta VP Claims
I am inclined to agree with this. I let my son play computer games to his heart's content in his childhood and he now has a highly-paid job using advanced computer skills
Meta Vice President and Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis says she does not believe social media has “done harm to our children.”
At a recent social media inquiry, Nationals MP Andrew Wallace raised the issue with Ms. Davis, who on several occasions, rejected claims that digital platforms such as Facebook and Instagram hurt young individuals.
Some of the harms discussed by MPs included mental health problems, online bullying, and fostering improper perceptions of what is a healthy body.
Mr. Wallace asked whether Ms. Davis would stand by her previous statements.
In response, the Meta vice president once again said she did not think that social media had caused harm.
“I don’t think that social media has done harm to our children,” the VP said.
“I think that social media has provided tremendous benefits,” she said, noting that teenagers have used social to build community, stay connected to friends and pursue their interests.
“I think that issues of teen mental health are complex and multifactorial.
“I think that it is our responsibility as a company to ensure that teens can be able to take advantage of those benefits of social media in a safe and positive environment.”
Meta Claims It Is Providing Safe, Positive Experiences
At the same time, Ms. Davis said Meta was committed to providing a safe and positive experience for children.
Using the example of teenagers struggling with an eating disorder, she said her company had implemented a number of measures to ensure that it was not exacerbating teenagers’ problem.
“For example, we have a policy against diet ads for teens. We do not allow the promotion of eating disorder content on our platform. We’ve built classifiers to remove it,” Ms. Davis said.
“If a teen searches for that type of content on our platform, we actually provide resources. We pop up resources to redirect them.
“We make efforts to try to support people who may be having those types of issues and ensure that we are not contributing to those issues that that individual may be dealing with.”
However, Mr. Wallace was not satisfied with Ms. Davis’s answer.
“I’ve got to say, dealing with Meta is like dealing with big tobacco in the 1960s and the 1970s. You can’t be taken seriously,” he said.
Despite Ms. Davis’s claims, a 2023 study by The University of Sydney indicated that adolescents were subject to a wide range of negative experiences.
Specifically, 54 percent of the respondents said they felt they were wasting time when using social media, while 37 percent thought they overused social media apps.
In addition, 27 percent suffered from sleep deprivation and 17 percent experienced online bullying.
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‘Limiting ultra-processed foods may not always result in healthy diet’
Limiting ultra-processed foods (UPFs) may not always result in a healthy and nutritious diet, experts have said.
UPFs are widely viewed as unhealthy because they contain high amounts of saturated fat, sugars and salt.
But scientists said cutting down on UPFs may not necessarily lead to a healthier diet – because the system used to label foods based on the level of processing, known as Nova, does not look at nutritional values.
For example, some packaged foods such as unsweetened apple sauce, filtered milk, liquid egg whites, and some brands of raisins and canned tomatoes can be classed as ultra-processed, even though these are “nutrient dense”, the team said.
The researchers also found certain foods that are labelled as minimally processed by Nova can be more expensive, have a shorter shelf life, and provide a poor diet.
Presenting the findings at the American Society for Nutrition conference in Chicago, Dr Julie Hess, a research nutritionist at the United States Department of Agriculture (Usda), said: “This study indicates that it is possible to eat a low-quality diet even when choosing mostly minimally processed foods.
“It also shows that more-processed and less-processed diets can be equally nutritious (or non-nutritious), but the more-processed diet may have a longer shelf life and be less costly.”
For the study, the researchers created two breakfast menus, both containing jam on toast and eggs cooked in different ways.
The “less-processed” menu, which featured homemade jam and bread and poached egg with bacon, derived 20% of its calories from UPFs.
The “more-processed” breakfast, which contained shop-bought jam and bread, egg toast made with ham, and hash browns, derived 67% of its calories from ultra-processed foods.
Both meals received a “low” score of about 43-44 out of 100 in the Healthy Eating Index, a tool used to measure diet quality based on how well it aligns with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
But the less processed menu was more than twice as expensive and reached its expiry date over three times faster without delivering any additional nutritional value, the researchers said.
Dr Hess said: “The results of this study indicate that building a nutritious diet involves more than a consideration of food processing as defined by Nova.
“The concepts of ‘ultra-processed’ foods and ‘less-processed’ foods need to be better characterised by the nutrition research community.”
Commenting on the research, Dr Hilda Mulrooney, a reader in nutrition and health at London Metropolitan University, said the study “illustrates a major problem many dietitians and nutritionists have with the Nova classification system, namely that it distinguishes foods only on the basis of their degree of processing and not on their nutritional value”.
She said that “rejecting foods on the basis of their degree of processing would risk removing many foods which could add considerable nutritional value to diets”.
Dr Mulrooney said that, in the UK, that many foods classified by the Nova system as ultra processed, such as some breakfast cereals and high-street breads, make “important contributions” to a person’s dietary intake.
She added: “Without them, there is a risk that some groups might not meet the recommended intakes of key nutrients.”
Dr Mulrooney also said cost is also “a really important consideration” when it comes to choosing what foods to eat.
“Foods that last and are affordable are not only likely to be more attractive options to many, but to be the only options for some,” she said.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nova-chicago-london-metropolitan-university-b2571476.html
**********************************************A Religious Freedom Case for "YIGBY"
Some churches want to use their properties to get around local-government barriers to housing construction
I recently wrote about the "YIGBY" ("Yes in God's Backyard") movement, which seeks to empower churches and other religious organizations build housing on their property that would otherwise be banned by zoning restrictions. Notre Dame law Prof. Patrick Reidy (who is also a Catholic priest) recently published an article in the Yale Law Journal arguing that YIGBYism is required by constitutional and statutory laws protecting religious liberty. Here 's the abstract:
In recent years, faith communities across the United States have begun to create affordable housing on church property, inspired by sincerely held religious beliefs. Some are building microhomes behind their houses of worship. Others are converting residences once used by religious ministers—from rectories to abbeys to convents—into units for seniors and low-income families. Still others are repurposing their vacant schools, church parking lots, and undeveloped parcels of land for denser multifamily structures, from townhouses to apartment buildings. Within housing-advocacy circles and among faith communities, these continent-wide efforts to create affordable housing on church property have manifested an affirmative declaration: "Yes, In God's Backyard."
Legal scholarship and popular media have extensively documented the affordable-housing crisis. In particular, scholars and commentators have underscored the pernicious role of exclusionary zoning in strangling housing production, ultimately sending regional housing prices skyward. When faith communities create affordable housing on church property, much of which is located in residentially zoned areas, they seek something other than fair market value. Some might call it "charity" (tzedakah) or "discipleship," a commitment to "welcome the stranger" or to "love your neighbor as yourself."
Faith communities seek theologically and morally sound uses for their underutilized property, but often struggle to overcome the regulatory and financial hurdles of adaptive reuse. Local governments can incentivize redevelopment that benefits the wider community, growing their affordable housing supply. But their mutual benefit does not exempt faith communities from challenge when they choose to redevelop church property for affordable housing. Neighbors may seek to thwart faith communities from introducing denser, multifamily residential structures in their backyard, relying on land-use restrictions designed to prohibit less costly forms of housing. When they succeed, these challenges from NIMBY ("Not In My Backyard") neighbors can limit both housing supply and the free exercise of religion.
This Feature thus proposes a novel response to exclusionary zoning: religious liberty. Where sincerely held religious beliefs inspire faith communities' efforts to create affordable housing, these communities can assert constitutional and statutory free exercise protections against land-use decisions that obstruct denser, less expensive, multifamily developments on church land. This Feature also explores municipal and state legislative reforms that lower the barrier where faith communities struggle to overcome the regulatory and financial hurdles of adaptive reuse and demonstrates the breadth of potential for affordable housing on church property, drawing on public sources and a novel data set to map parcels owned by Roman Catholic dioceses in Chicago, Illinois and Oakland, California across municipal zones.
Regardless of how faith communities came to own property within their limits, or why faith communities seek to repurpose property within their limits, most local governments need property within their limits to create affordable housing. And faith communities are willing partners in their endeavor.
I am not an expert on the relevant religious liberty issues. But his argument strikes me as compelling and persuasive.
It's worth noting, however, that its scope is limited. Reidy doesn't argue that religious organizations have a constitutional or statutory religious-liberty right to build whatever housing they want. Rather, they can only do so in cases where the relevant religious property owner considers it a religious duty (usually a duty to provide for the poor and needy). Thus, they could not use this argument to, e.g., build new luxury condos in order to bring in additional revenue for the church. And that's true even though economists and land-use scholars rightly point out that building new housing for the affluent also helps the poor, by reducing competition for the existing stock of housing and by promoting economic growth. Even where there is a proper religious-freedom rationale for exemption, it could potentially be overridden by a compelling state interest.
In my earlier post, I also noted some other limitations of YIGBYism. It's a valuable step in the right direction, but not a replacement for full-blown NIMBY reforms. Ideally, we should abolish exclusionary zoning across the board, and let both religious and secular property owners build whatever housing they want, subject only to narrowly defined health and safety restrictions. In a forthcoming Texas Law Review article, Josh Braver and I explain how that can be accomplished by stronger judicial enforcement of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
But Reidy's religious-liberty defense of YIGBY is an important contribution to legal scholarship, and his argument might end up influencing court decisions on these issues, as well. It seems likely that at least some faith organizations will raise such arguments to challenge zoning restrictions in the short to medium term future.
If YIGBYism continues to spread and becomes an important focus of religious-liberty litigation, it might also help change the political valence of religious liberty exemptions to generally applicable laws. When the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and other related laws were enacted by federal and state governments in the 1990s, they enjoyed broad bipartisan support, probably even more on the left than on the right. Indeed, these laws were reactions against the Supreme Court's 1990 ruling in Employment Division v. Smith, which was authored by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Liberal lions Harry Blackmun, William Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall dissented.
The valence of the issue changed as the stereotypical religious-liberty claimant shifted from members of minority faiths seeking to use a banned drug for its religious ceremonies (like the Native American plaintiffs in Smith, who wanted to use pejote), to socially conservative Christians who oppose contraception or refuse to "bake the cake" or provide other services for same-sex wedding ceremonies.
But we now have a new generation of left-coded religious liberty exemption arguments. YIGBY is an example. So too are religious organizations who aid undocumented immigrants in defiance of federal and state laws, and people who argue they have a religious duty to provide abortion services (at least in some situations). As these types of claims become more common and more prominent, perhaps the ideological valence of religious-liberty exemption arguments will shift again.
I am one of the rare people who supports a wide range of both left and right-wing religious-liberty exemptions—despite being an atheist myself! But it's easy for me to say that, given that I'm also a libertarian who supports strong property rights, open borders migration rights, abortion rights, and also the right of business owners to refuse services for a wide range of reasons (include ones I disapprove of on moral grounds, as in the case of opponents of contraception and same-sex marriage). Indeed, I think all of these activities should be legal for people who do them for purely secular reasons, as well as religious ones. I might make a narrow exception for businesses who have a monopoly over vital services, as in the case of public utilities.
People with more conventional left or right-wing views face more difficult trade-offs here. But in considering them, they should be aware that religious-liberty claims cut both ways, and are not limited to one side of the political spectrum.
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/06/30/a-religious-freedom-case-for-yigby/
************************************************Gender affirmative guidelines just an echo chamber, says UK expert
The British paediatrician who carried out a world-leading review of care models for children with gender distress has criticised trans healthcare guidelines as an “echo chamber” based on weak evidence that show no efficacy in alleviating the psychological distress of young people.
Hilary Cass, who led the landmark review of gender-affirming care that prompted the UK’s National Health Service to ban the prescription of puberty blocker hormone drugs for children under 16, said that gender affirmative care guidelines around the world had not followed an evidence-based approach, and “sort of copy and paste off each other” in order to justify their medical approaches.
Dr Cass, a former president of the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, participated in a panel live from the UK on Tuesday night, which was hosted by Australian psychiatrist Phillip Morris, the president of the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists, one of the first bodies to call for caution on experimental medical treatments and greater wholistic psychotherapy for young people with gender distress.
Dr Cass criticised the activist World Professional Association for Transgender Healthcare for essentially suppressing evidence that the standards of care it devised were not evidence-based and showed no proof of alleviating the distress of children.
These standards are followed by most of Australia’s major children’s hospitals that all frequently prescribe puberty blockers and hormone treatments to children and teenagers. Dr Cass noted in her independent report handed down in April that WPATH had been “highly influential in directing international practice, although its guidelines were found by the University of York’s appraisal to lack developmental rigour and transparency”. The Cass report included an appraisal by the University of York that analysed international gender affirmative care guidelines, including those of the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne. The review found the RCH’s guidelines similarly lacked rigour and independence.
“The evidence base is weak … international guidelines have for the most part not followed standard evidence-based approaches,” Dr Cass told the Australian seminar. “And it has influenced most other international guidelines. There is a sort of echo chamber of sort of copying and pasting off each other. The only guidelines that have taken an independent and evidence based approach are the Swedish and the Finnish guidelines.”
The Cass independent Review was commissioned following patient and whistleblower complaints that prompted the closure of London’s flagship Gender Identity Development Service run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Dr Cass said that complex clinical presentations including mental health issues and autism among children who presented at the GIDS were “overshadowed” when the children presented with gender distress. The pediatrician concluded that puberty blockers rather than acting as a “pause button” allowing children time to explore their identity, seem to lock them into a medicalised treatment pathway.
Dr Cass’s final report endorsed a fundamental shift in approach away from medical intervention towards a holistic model that addresses other mental health problems the children may have.
The report concluded that children had been let down by a lack of research and “remarkably weak” evidence on medical interventions in gender care. She wrote in the British Medical Journal that gender medicine’s pillars were “built on shaky foundations”, expressing concern at the unknown long-term cognitive and physical impacts of puberty blockers.
Puberty blockers are now only able to prescribed as part of clinical trials in the UK, and several other European countries that have moved to roll back the experimental approach espoused by the trans activist group World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
All of Australia’s children’s hospitals including most of the country’s state health ministers have rejected the relevance of Dr Cass’s report to Australia for reasons that appear spurious given the fact that Dr Cass’s report examined gender affirming care models internationally, and that the deep research carried out by the independent review into puberty blockers is clearly relevant beyond the UK.
Dr Cass’s report said there was “no evidence” puberty blockers allowed young people “time to think” by delaying the onset of puberty — the original rationale for their use. It found the vast majority of children who began taking puberty blockers progressed to taking cross-sex hormones as they grew older, despite the fact that desistance from trans identification among teenagers was relatively common.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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